This web site is still being developed so scanned images are not yet
available for all items.

About This Project

Project Description

Through a major grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the
Kansas State Historical Society and the Kansas Collection of the University
of Kansas present Territorial Kansas Online, a vivid illustration the time period
1854 through January 1861, when Kansas entered the Union.

During the 1850s, Kansas was the focus of the nation struggling to determine
whether or not Kansas Territory would enter the Union as a free or a slave state.
The conflict in Kansas was a microcosm of the growing divisions between the
South and the North over the expansion of slavery, federalism and nationalism,
the beginning industrialization of the North, and changing political coalitions
in Congress. Kansas was the battleground for implementing the concept of “popular
sovereignty” as outlined in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which created
the territory.

Events in Kansas during its territorial period were chaotic and disruptive.
Verbal and physical confrontations between pro- and anti-slavery supporters
were common. These confrontations were reported in the national press. The image
of “Bleeding Kansas” played a major role in the increasing tensions
in the nation prior to the Civil War.

The major product of the project is this virtual repository of the best Territorial
Kansas collections from the two institutions. Visitors to the site have access
to government documents, diaries, letters, photographs, maps, newspapers, rare
secondary sources and historical artifacts. The emotions of the times are conveyed
in handwritten documents, which, with misspelled words and blotted ink make
their creators and the events described tangible to the modern day reader. This
project will also incorporate museum artifacts as historical evidence. Artifacts
have the power to carry the past into the present because they exist beyond
the historical event they are associated with, providing a direct connection
to people who lived in the past. Images of historic sites where some of the
territorial confrontations occurred will also be included.

The historical materials selected for the project may be used for research
papers, History Day projects, and by teachers developing their own lesson plans.
The information will be of value to lifelong learners interested in this critical
era of U.S. history and to Civil War buffs and re-enactors endeavoring to understand
and articulate the motivations of individual soldiers who participated in the
Civil War.

The second project product are lesson plans based on selected digitized items
developed to enhance the teaching of U. S. history at the middle school, high
school, and college levels. The curriculum materials fulfill portions of the
Kansas Department of Education’s recently drafted history standards for
U.S. and Kansas history and include educational objectives that are applicable
to any U.S. history class.

The current URL is http://www.territorialkansasonline.org/~imlskto/cgi-bin/index.php?SCREEN=description.
This file was last modified September 12 2013 04:09:26 PM.